All projects have a certain amount of fixed overhead costs associated with our rigorous due diligence process, vetting, and setup. These costs are slightly higher for international organizations as there is more work involved. These costs hold steady for a $10K project or a $200K project as our vetting is the same.

As for donations, typically, most projects are funded using a large number of small donations. So a project with a $10,000 goal might have 130+ donations around $75 each. Similarly, a project with a goal of $200K would then have 2,600+ donations of $75 each. The difference is in the number of donors – and thus the number of credit card charges, bank fees, customer service inquiries, and the like are higher. It does cost us more to handle 2,600 donors than 130 donors.

Obviously GlobalGiving does require funds to operate. Rather than charge projects setup fees or monthly fees to be on our site (something that many fundraising services do), we have no fixed fees. We do this to ensure that even the smallest organizations can have a fair shot without spending a dime. While it may sound high, the 15% fee mostly cover our costs. We look forward to the day when the 15% more than covers our costs so that we can lower our fee. We have set the fee at the rate required for us to stay in operation. (Unlike some organizations, we’re keeping our staff as small as we can and are working on scaling our operations through productivity and process enhancements rather than more salaries.)

We’ve been at this long enough to know that despite our efforts to explain it, some people just can’t accept our 15% fee. That’s okay. We’ll continue to work hard to find and vet the best non-profits in the world, provide them with fundraising tools, training, and partnerships, and continue build an incredible platform for donors and non-profits to find and help each other.

We hope that you’ll continue to keep us in mind and check back in on our impact from time to time even if you don’t want to donate.

We welcome any feedback or questions.

Thanks,
Kevin Conroy
Director of User Experience and Product Development
http://www.globalgiving.org

How do the costs of facilitating $10,000 worth of donations for a project substantially differ from the costs for doing so for a $200,000 one?

yet global giving requires $30,000 to facilitate the one project and only $1500 the other.

Of course global giving itself needs money to operate, but a fee schedule like this generates far beyond cost – even though non profits do not make a \profit\ – I would rather my money went to giving shelter to a rescued child than a new staffer for a non profit, even a NFP that is really worthwhile like yours.